In the biographies of rock artists, the phrases “The album was coolly received by critics” or “The album was well received by critics” are often found. Such phrases are inexcusable generalizations. Critics are specific people with specific first and last names, who are most often not particularly known to rock fans. There is a stereotypical opinion that critics are parasites incapable of creativity, who, due to their helplessness, discuss someone else’s art. This is not true, because writing lyrics about music is also creative. Not every listener is able to articulate the feeling of music clearly in a way that is interesting to others. A critic is primarily an attentive listener, sometimes his ability to formulate a thought and fit a piece of music into a wide cultural context can inspire a consumer to listen, cause surprise or indignation of the object of criticism itself. The band Sonic Youth has a song “Kill Your  Idols”, where the American critic Robert Christgau is mentioned in a negative way in the text. How many critics have received such an honor? Christgau can be called the most famous critic in popular music. He was born in 1942 and witnessed the emergence of rock culture. Christgau learned about this music from Alan Fried himself, a DJ who is credited with the authorship of the term “rock and roll”. He worked for a time as a sports columnist and crime reporter, and in the late 1960s began writing reviews of music albums in The Village Voice magazine. In 1981, he wrote the book “Buyer’s Guide”, where he collected his reviews over many years of work and explained his method. This book is freely available on his website. I will mention some interesting facts from it. Christgau listened to 1,500 thousand albums a year. His favorite music is “variations of good melodies with a fast tempo.” “The luxury of a critic is getting albums for free.” It’s also a funny phrase, but it’s no longer relevant for our time. Christgau’s most valuable invention was his famous grade scale from the letter A (highest score) to E (deep failure). His reviews are an example of the highest skill of a music critic.  In several sentences, he mentions the main songs of the album in his opinion, expresses his attitude to the manner of performance in biting and ironic phrases and places the album in the general context of the artist’s work. Christgau is a master of provocations and Sonic Youth’s song about him shows it once again.    Another figure I would like to talk about in our lecture is the British critic and philosopher Mark Fisher. He was born in 1968 and belongs to another generation of intellectuals whose tastes were formed in the late 1970s. It was a pretty depressing time, where the musical nerve was punk and post-punk. Fischer looks at cultural facts through the prism of depression and capitalism. If Christgau worked in popular paper publications, then Fischer published his notes on the K-punk blog. Fischer’s talent is the ability to describe the impact of a song or album in a way that makes you want to listen to it immediately. In his book “The Ghosts of My Life”, which consists of blog entries, he builds a whole theory where he compares songs with a meeting with ghosts. This is the most subtle and emotional analysis of popular culture, which helps to look at it from an unexpected side.